Bakeries produce and sell flour-based, oven-baked food products such as bread, cookies, cakes, pastries and pies. Some bakeries are cafés with baked goods and assorted foods and beverages for customer dining on the premises. Others serve as specialty shops with decorative cakes for weddings, birthday parties, anniversaries and business events.
Bakeries use bakery carts to hold food products during baking operations such as oven baking and cooling outside the oven. Bakery carts also transport food products between bakery equipment such as the oven and refrigerator and between the bakery and external commercial businesses such as distribution centers and grocery stores.
Conventional bakery carts include a frame with corner supports, base rails, shelf ledges and wheels. The corner supports are vertically oriented, the base rails are laterally oriented and mechanically couple the corner supports to one another, the shelf ledges are mechanically coupled to the corner supports and laterally oriented to support shelves such as baking trays and sheet pans that hold baked goods and the wheels enable the bakery cart to be transported without lifting.
A major drawback of conventional bakery carts is that they are difficult and cumbersome to store. For instance, bakery carts with rigid non-collapsible frames occupy valuable floor space between baking operations which is particularly inconvenient for small shops. Bakery carts that dismantle require valuable time and labor for assembly and disassembly. Bakery carts that stack often have awkward nesting structures that are non-uniform and inefficient.
Accordingly, there is a need for a collapsible bakery cart that is reliable, lightweight, inexpensive and easily transportable.